The legendary film critic Pauline Kael wrote of Close Encounters, "this isn't nuts-and-bolts, Popular Mechanics science fiction, it is beatific technology - machines from outer space deified." When the film climaxes at Devil's Tower as first contact is made (in one of the film's many visually-breathtaking sequences), our hero sacrifices his life and his earthy responsibilities - man, husband, father - to ascend to a new level of consciousness.
Like many classic religious figures, he becomes a pariah and an outcast, alienated from his family, friends and co-workers, finding redemption only after connecting with fellow "disciples," all of whom share a common vision and spiritual quest. The quintessential Spielberg protagonist, blue-collar suburbanite Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) is an ordinary man who finds himselfr in extraordinary circumstances. It was the first new-age movie, re-imagining spiritual transcendence as extra-terrestrial contact. It married a Disney-like sense of enchantment and idealism with a metaphysical exploration of faith and religion. Indeed, thirty years later, while Lucas' original trilogy has suffered something of a backlash due to its poorly received prequels, Close Encounters is now regarded as a genuine epic as influential, awe-inspiring and revolutionary as Metropolis, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner.Īt the time of its release, Spielberg's masterpiece flew in the face of all that audiences expected out of mainstream science fiction. Although the genre had long been dominated by C-grade schlock, the arrival of two blockbuster films changed all that - George Lucas' Star Wars and Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind.īut while Lucas' nostalgic space opera was certainly the bigger hit at the time (and went on to become the most influential cinematic phenomenon of the late twentieth century), today Spielberg's more benevolent tale of first contact with extra-terrestrials is widely perceived as the superior film of the two. The year 1977 marked a turning point for science fiction in US cinema.
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